London: The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 and the shooting down of yet another Malaysia Airlines plane MH17 a few months later, could both have been masterminded by Russian President Vladimir Putin according to a report by US science and technology expert Jeff Wise, as reported by The Daily Mail.
Wise said that a new report regarding the MH17 disaster in July 2014 could provide clues linking Russia to the earlier disappearance of a second Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200. Wise was actively involved in CNN’s coverage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370. It was at the time of his investigation that he chanced up on a report by the UK-based investigative-group, Bellingcat.
Read: Inquiry finds MH17 shot down by Russian- made BUK missile
Bellingcat shot to fame four years ago when it produced evidence it claimed showed the Syrian government was using chemical weapons on its own citizens.
The Bellingcat report summary, regarding both the Malaysia Airlines aircrafts, suggest that the Russian military unit would only have taken the action with approval from the highest ranks of the Russian military.
Bellingcat used social media and other online resources to examine MH17, which crashed down in the Ukraine during a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
It points to a Russian brigade it believes 'provided, and possibly operated' a Buk-M1 missile launcher that brought the aircraft down, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.
Read: MH370: What we know and what we don't
'Ultimately, responsibility for the downing of MH17 from a weapon provided and possibly operated by the Russian military lies with the Ministry of Defence and the Supreme Commander of the Russian Armed Forces, President Vladimir Putin', the report concluded.
Wise said that 'we don't know Putin's motive' but that based on Bellingcat's year-long report 'Putin obviously felt he had reason enough'.
Wise suggested in 2015 that MH370, which went missing while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, was in fact hijacked on the orders of Vladimir Putin and secretly landed in Kazakhstan.
He based his theory on pings that the plane gave off for seven hours after it went missing, that were recorded by British telecommunications company Inmarsat.
According to Wise’s theory of the missing MH370, the hijackers 'spoofed' the plane's navigation data to make it seem like it went in another direction, but flew it to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is leased from Kazakhstan by Russia.
Read: Watch: MH17 wreckage reveals horror of plane's last moments
Wise appears to suggest that the new Bellingcat MH17 findings adds weight to the astonishing theory that Russian president Vladimir Putin may have been behind both disasters.
The search for MH370, being conducted in the southern Indian Ocean south west of Australia, is due to end in June this year.
